Crates have been used for many years for the transportation and storage of a variety of objects. At first crates were made of wood or wood and metal. More recently crates, of plastic have become common and because of the advantageous features of plastic, in many instances, the wooden, or wooden and metal crates have been replaced. The plastic crates are typically formed in one integral piece; customarily by injection molding. The usual materials for the crates are polyethylene and polypropylene. The end result is a sturdy, lightweight crate that is durable.
Plastic crates have been put to use by the public for just about every conceivable storage use probably because of the lightweight sturdy construction. One common use of plastic crates is the storage of files. Typically, files are inserted into the crate and rest on the bottom of the crate, making retrieval difficult due to the weight and hinderance the files in the crate exert on each other.
A different type of file storage system was developed to alleviate the difficulties associated with resting files on the bottom of a storage area, which employs a method of hanging files from horizontal metal rails. The metal rails can be incorporated into the storage container by the use of a cumbersome metal frame or by the insertion of metal rails into prefabricated holes in the storage container walls as taught by Stonier, U. S. Pat. No. 4,775,069. Although either method of hanging files provides for easier retrieval of stored files, both are cumbersome due to the addition of the metal frame or rails. Not only are the metal rails cumbersome, but they are unreliable because the hanging file folder can easily be jolted off the rail causing the file to disengage from the support causing the contents of the file to become disorganized.